


call and response

by mollivanders



Category: The Americans (TV 2013)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Post-Canon, Somebody Lives/Not Everyone Dies, an AV club article once suggested they could have survived the fall of communism, and become semi-evil oligarchs, and damn if the finale didn't push me to finally write this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-07
Updated: 2018-06-07
Packaged: 2019-05-19 07:07:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,119
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14869052
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mollivanders/pseuds/mollivanders
Summary: They have prepared, and positioned, and at last, as their old colleagues rise in the new government, they rise to new positions of their own. It is not like before; not the bureaucratic prestige of Oleg’s family. A new word is being thrown around the city, in loud whispers and with little conceit.Oligarchs.After all this time – she is not who she was.(She is more.)





	call and response

**Author's Note:**

> The tags on [this post](http://ladytharen.tumblr.com/post/117377638614/desroubins-i-think-its-a-lucky-pioneer-to-be) needed an answer: _#at the start of the season i never would have guessed this relationship would destroy me but here we are#there was a brilliant comment at the av club by someone who was wishing for these two to weather the fall of communism together#and then emerge as semi-evil oligarchs on the other side#that’s about the most realistic possible happy ending for them so that’s what i’m now wishing for too_. Blame the series finale for finally making me do this.

She doesn’t make it to the market that day. Instead, she stays at the _Rezidentura_ , catching up on her unofficial diplomatic correspondence, tying up loose ends and covering her tracks. Later, when she takes a cab home, she notices a solitary figure watching her on the street corner, out of place in the rain and fog; a caricature of a spook from her grandmother’s favorite film.

(She writes it off - the first time.)

The second time she spots the figure on the corner, she changes her calendar, switches which door she exits the _Rezidentura_ from, and alternates her route home. For all that, she starts to notice more of them, and where an American might have written it off as paranoia – Nina Sergeevna Krilova is not an American.

She is KGB.

Instead, she walks into Arkady Vasili’s office and tells him she’s being watched, and that they should use it to their advantage.

(When they try to grab her a week later, coming out of a rear exit, one of the assailants takes a bad knife to the stomach.)

After that, they stop following her – or seem to.

(She keeps watch, and rests uneasily.)

“What do you think they wanted with you?” the new agent, Tatiana Vyazemtseva asks her in a meeting with Arkady Vasili, taking notes.

Nina’s hands are folded in her lap, her back straight, her voice steady as she says, “What does any American want?” How should she know? She is a Soviet citizen, a Young Pilgrim grown up to be KGB.

Loyal.

(For all that – she lets her caviar-for-cash business dry up and shifts her remaining tracks onto another agent.

In Soviet Russia, there is no loyalty.)

+

When Arkady Vasili gets a promotion back home, Nina treads lightly around his replacement. He comes with a young upstart agent from a good family – the kind of family that Nina wouldn’t have been allowed near outside the _Rezidentura_.

“He’s a bad mattress,” Arkady Ivanovich complains behind closed doors and shoots her a look. “ _Too soft_.”

From the look of him, he’s never worked a day in his life before coming to the _Rezidentura_ , and she tells him as much. She _doesn’t_ tell him that he has a nice smile, or that his taste in American music is questionable, or that his casual confidence is catching. When Arkady Ivanovich assigns her to work with Burov on a counterintelligence assignment, she keeps a professional distance between them as they work.

At first.

“Do you trust me, Nina Sergeevna?” he asks from across the desk, his expression more serious than usual. It doesn’t take her half a moment to reply.

“No,” she says, answering surety with surety, and then ignores the way her heart skips when he smiles, pleased appraisal in his eye and in his voice.

“Good,” he says. A warm shiver runs through her in spite of everything. Late night follows late night at the _Rezidentura_ , and she lets him walk her home instead of taking a cab.

(She doesn’t worry about the spies in the shadows – as much.

It helps, she thinks, to be one of them.)

+

He teases her, tries to make her blush behind closed doors, and walks her through advanced training. Arkady Ivanovich suspects Tatiana has been compromised, that the F.B.I. is attempting a backdoor coup of the _Rezidentura_ , and Nina has been tasked as her foil.

She forces herself to concentrate as Oleg wraps her in straps and wires, a truth-telling trick to expose the lie of her loyalty, and her breaths come less evenly than she wants.

“Do you know why the asp killed Cleopatra?” he asks, his tone somehow intimate instead of superior. “Because she moved. Do you understand?”

“I must not move,” she says, and he tilts his head toward her. He could have been a teacher in another life. History, or science. _History_ , she decides. Prestigious, in any path he took.

“Not inside, no. Inside, you must be still.” He’s still talking, training. Her life depends on its success. She takes a measured breath and the machine jumps.

“How do I do that?” she asks, her voice falling quiet. He is beside her in a breath, his presence steady reassurance in the midst of the cold war she’s been caught in.

“You have to believe what you say,” he says, and locks eyes with her, emphatic. “You must commit to it, embrace it.”

“So in order for you to trick this machine, this – this wasp – I must lie to myself.”

“You have to lie to tell a greater truth,” he corrects. “Now, let's start again.”

That, she can do.

(That, she has always been able to do.)

+

 _Call and response_ , he’d named it, first in the office and then in her bed, brushing the hair back from her face. Worry has crept into his eyes and she smiles, believing in her own abilities.

(She can start again.)

“You have no armor,” he whispers, brushing her hair back as they cocoon in silken sheets, “nothing to protect you – except your wits, your courage, and your beauty. How is it possible you’re here?”

She’d heard the tapes from the office during her first mission; the first foray into enemy territory. His voice had been restrained but even then, she’d heard the ghost of fear.

Now, there is only awe.

“You are an amazing woman,” he adds. His Russian is a balm across her heart, and she smiles happily, shifting closer towards him.

(It’s a dance, she decides. A dance she is learning all the steps to, if only with him.)

“Oleg Burov,” she says, and there is not an ounce of _pretend_ in her body as she pulls him into another kiss, his hands tracing her lines in potent familiarity. He is _real, real, real_ in ways no home ever was before.

(She doesn’t try to put words to the rest.)

+

Outside her office, the _Rezidentura_ buzzes, oblivious to the tryst blossoming within. Oleg keeps his a professional distance even behind closed doors, but his hands aren’t quite steady as he pins a Young Pioneer badge to her jacket. It’s childish, and joyous, and she can’t help the smile that mirrors his own.

“I think it is a lucky pioneer, to be so close to your heart,” he says, and she wishes – she doesn’t know what she’d wish for. This, over and over, unbroken.

(Two days later, the F.B.I. tries to turn her at the market.)

She does not nod at the American agent; she does not comply. She takes Oleg’s hand as he helps her climb into the trunk of a car, desperation lacing his last guidance to her as she flees.

 _I know of no officer smarter or more capable_ , he says, rushing to get the words out, no time to spare. _I believe your future is bright, Nina Sergeevna._

All she can think on the desperate escape is foolish and silly and –

she will never see him again.

+

She expects no word from the _Rezidentura_ , and at first – none comes.

(Until it does.)

He doesn’t call, and she wouldn’t expect him to. She wouldn’t expect anything. Instead, she runs into him as she’s leaving work, almost passing him by in the rush of changing shifts. He practically blends into the Soviet lobby decoration, a product of the regime as much as she.

“Oleg Igorevich,” she says in surprise, caught off guard, and tucks her smile back. She does not know him, here. Perhaps she did not even know him there, and yet – here he is.

“Nina Sergeevna,” he says, and his hands twist behind his back. She startles, alert, before realizing the truth.

He’s _nervous_.

The knowledge of it lets her fall into sync with him quicker than she’d ever admit.

“You’re home?” she asks, even as she knows the answer. He has shed his American skin; truly Russian once more.

“I put in for a transfer back home,” he says, and a worry line creases his forehead. It was not there when she left, and she fights the impulse to smooth it away. “America was not a good fit.”

“For me either,” she says, trying a smile. “Too much pretend.” Se tilts her head, testing the waters. Her feet hurt, her eyes are tired, and she has to be back in the office at six in the morning. “Have you eaten?” she asks and he beams, as much as she’d ever seen him to do.

“Not a bite,” he says.

When his hand brushes against hers, a bulwark against the frozen wind, she slips her gloved hand into his in determination.

(Call and response.)

He taught her well.

+

His family is, to say the least, not pleased. He walks her home after dinner and she thinks to herself, _That is the last you will ever hear from him, Nina Sergeevna. You had better get a cat._ He shuffles his feet at her door, building up to some confession, and she braces herself.

“I was offered a transfer to the _Minneftegazstroy_ ,” he says, and it takes her a moment to adjust her reality. “It has better pay, and better hours.” His breath fogs in the cold Moscow air and she catches it between her lips as she looks up at him.

“That is good news, isn’t it?” she asks in a low voice, unsure how to navigate this territory. When he locks eyes with her once more, she’s thrown back across the Atlantic, back to a small office in a large building, where just the two of them and a Young Pioneer pin exist.

“Marry me,” he says, and she actually forgets to breathe, thrown off balance, a standing cliché.

(She thinks of a very small town, and a very small marriage, and a life she’d wanted to escape.)

This is not that life at all.

Perhaps, in another life, there would have been more ceremony. Perhaps he would have asked her parents, if he could find them. Perhaps he would have made a speech, if they were different people.

(Perhaps they wouldn’t have made it this far.)

This, in the end, is who they are.

“Yes, Oleg,” she says, and her voice grows in strength with each word. “Yes, I will marry you.”

+

He takes the transfer, and then a promotion. She transfers to the same ministry, years of classified KGB experience a unique asset here, and the years pass as happily as they can. And they hear things. Rumors. Old allies and family spread whispers alike, across the Atlantic and back, and old instincts propel them into a uniquely strategic position.

When the Wall comes down, they are prepared.

(They, together, survive the fall.)

Others, don't.

+

“To _perestroika_ ,” Oleg says at his family’s table. His brother frowns but their father raises his glass in return. He was always a man able to recognize shifting tides.

“ _Na Zdorovie_ ,” he says, “to you and Nina.”

(Time brings all walls down, in turn.)

They have prepared, and positioned, and at last, as their old colleagues rise in the new government, they rise to new positions of their own. It is not like before; not the bureaucratic prestige of Oleg’s family. A new word is being thrown around the city, in loud whispers and with little conceit.

 _Oligarchs_.

After all this time – she is not who she was.

(She is more.)

“It is like America was,” Oleg says on the drive home. His hair is longer now – a little grayer too. He seems taller somehow, the way he always was to her. His coat is warmer, and she is grateful to think they will never have to worry about the cold again. “We are back to your game of pretend.” He looks down at her then, his boyish smile a stark contrast to the facts of his success.

(A new country, of any kind, does not come easy. Not even to them.)

“A dance,” she says, and pulls him closer to her, the corners of his eyes crinkling with suppressed happiness. Is it even possible, for people like them? She will try to make it so. “But I wasn’t pretending with you.”

His answer is lost in her kiss, a touch that brims with all the honesty in her soul. It spreads down to her toes as Oleg pulls her closer, heedless of their driver, the streets of Moscow, and the rest of the world.

In a better world, she thinks, they would have a different kind of courage. They would have a different kind of country.

As she draws him closer, familiar and sweet, all she can think is – they are alive in this one.

(She won’t try to put words to the rest.)

_Finis_


End file.
